Lighthouse Network becomes Shift4 Payments after acquisition

Lighthouse Network has acquired payment gateway Shift4 Corp. and will rebrand its company as Shift4 Payments.

Shift4 has specialized in security products as part of its gateway offerings, providing end-to-end encryption and helping clients change banks or processors as needed without undergoing a major infrastructure overhaul.

Allentown, Pa.-based Lighthouse Network was established in 2017 to provide service to numerous point of sale brands with payment processing, technology solutions and shared corporate services.

Shift4 served thousands of clients across North America in retail and hospitality, including Choice Hotels, Caesars Entertainment, Red Roof Inn, Sleep Number and the PGA Tour. Shift4 Payments will now also power payment processing for Harbortouch, Future POS, Restaurant Manager and POSitcouch products.

"This acquisition is transformational for our organization as it enables us to power our industry-leading POS brands with a best-in-class payments platform," Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4 Payments, said in a Monday press release.

The story is not just about the POS brands, Isaacman added. "We also aim to empower the more than 300 existing Shift4 software integrations with game-changing benefits."

Founded in 1994, Shift4 says it holds 11 patents for its proprietary payments technologies and that it is credited with inventing payment data tokenization. The company's software integrations support independent software vendors and merchants in various verticals, including food and beverage, hospitality, retail and e-commerce.

"This acquisition combines the strengths of two significant and well-established organizations with complementary capabilities, fulfilling the notion that 'one plus one' can equal a much larger number than the math implies," J.D. Oder II, Shift4's president and chief technology officer, said in the release.